The present invention relates to motor vehicles, and more particularly, to an improved floor construction that has hidden seat rails which permit longitudinal sliding of the seats.
In most automobiles the driver and front passenger seats are each slideable along a pair of longitudinal rails that are bolted to the floor board of the car body and extend a substantial distance above the carpet. In many cases the seat rails are partially exposed and are not covered entirely by the seat. They can be tripped over by a person entering or leaving the automobile and they can also tear a person's shoes. In some cases the seat rails have telescoping sections to increase the range of forward travel to minimize the extension of the seat rails into the foot area in front of the seat. Such an arrangement only partially alleviates the obstruction problem. It is desirable for multipurpose vans and utility vehicles to have removable seats to increase the cargo carrying capacity. In such cases, the seats are normally mounted in stationary releasable mounts so that there are no obstructing rails when the seats are removed. It would be desirable to have slideable seats which could be removed without leaving raised rails that prevent or inhibit the sliding of cargo over the resulting cargo bay. Any floor construction affording this advantage must be readily adaptable to the stamped sheet metal floor construction prevalent in today's uni-body construction.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,015,877 of Button discloses a vehicle seat assembly with telescoping rails. These rails appear to be entirely mounted above the floor of the vehicle according to FIG. 1 of the patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,157,797 of Fox discloses an aircraft floor construction in FIG. 2 in which the wheels of the chairs roll in upwardly opening tracks 18 and 20 which extend continuously along the floor of the fuselage and accommodate multiple seats.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,422,690 of Kopich discloses a vehicle seat assembly in which telescoping track members are entirely supported above the floor pan 30.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,884 of Heling discloses another vehicle seat assembly which includes telescoping track members 30 and 32 entirely supported above the floor 12 by brackets 34 and 36.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,571 of Gionet discloses another sliding seat arrangement in which the rails or tracks apparently extend above the floor.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,707,030 of Harding discloses a another sliding seat assembly in which the rails or tracks extend above the floor according to FIGS. 4-6 of the patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,725,032 of Kazakoa et al. discloses another sliding vehicle seat assembly including lower rails 14 which are apparently secured above the vehicle floor via brackets 16.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,289 of Lecerf discloses another sliding seat assembly which appears to be mounted above the floor of the vehicle shown broken away in FIG. 1 of the patent.
None of the patents referenced above provides a floor construction which eliminates the obstruction of the rails or other mechanisms which are utilized to slide the seat longitudinally.